Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Continuing for your delectation a work in progress. Part one is here, part two is here.

Adastra Morales is beautiful when she’s sleeping. I mean, she’s pretty cute when she’s awake, but when sleep hides the trouble in her eyes, when her mouth goes slack and those tight lines fade, when her dark curls frame her baby-doll face… yeah. I saw her mind moving behind her flickering eyelids, moving through dreams. She was beautiful in there, too. Too beautiful.

I could have stood a long time watching her through the dirty window of the Bunny, drooling gently onto her Bay blanket, driver’s seat reclined as far back as it could go and still be counted on to return to an upright position, but I really wanted to get as far away from that farm as I could, as fast as four German cylinders could carry me. Plenty of time to moon over sleepy sorta-ex-girlfriends back in town, away from angry mummies and their primordial punishments. One of the boons Sekhemkhet had granted me in gratitude for winning his arm race was that he would deign to delay his vengeance for “one solar hour,” just long enough to hustle fragile Addy out of the psychic blast radius. Plus, you know, I needed a drink. This action-adventure shit is thirsty work.

Addy started awake at my knock, brown eyes shedding panicky sparks. I had a brief vision of her as a tough-as-nails, pistol-packin’ mama, pulling a piece from under that drool-damp wool wrap and me flinching back, hands quick into the air, and she sighs out a big breath, letting in the hammer with her thumb and saying something like “Don’t ever sneak up on me like that again!”

Where did that come from? Addy hates guns. In every personal interaction I’d seen her have with a firearm, she’d picked the gun up between thumb and forefinger, like garbage, dangling it at arm’s length only long enough to pass it to me. Instead of a six-gun popping up from under the blanket, I got a sleepy scowl and a fuzzy-mittened hand popping the broken passenger-side door open from the inside. I slid onto the chilly seat.

Friday, April 16, 2010

As sanctums go, Sekhemkhet’s prairie pad had never been much to look at on the surface, but now it was a full-on dump, human trash mixed in with the garbage. Breathing shallow through my mouth and damping down other senses I couldn't lose if I tried, I still gagged on the flophouse stench, the corruption of decayed and eroded enchantments.

The place was filled with people and the shells of people, a wall-to-wall, room-to-room carpet of bodies in various states of narcosis, drunkenness, withdrawal, unconsciousness. In dim light refracted between heavy curtains I counted six people leaning against the stained walls of the dining-room, in the centre of which a big table buried in reeking food containers tilted on two legs. Nobody cared, was able to care, that I was there. Another morning after in three years of mornings after, thralls rocking a sick and stolen party. How could they know Daddy was coming home?

On the livingroom loveseat, under an obscenely daubed diagram that made my sloppy glyphwork look like the Seventh Seal, a jaundiced teenager lay passed out with her mouth slack around her scabby lover’s limp dick. Beyond this charming tableau, a greasy dude in ancient Ocean Pacific surfer shorts lay with his head propped up against a charred Ottoman, playing Grand Theft Auto with the sound off, bashing a virtual bag-lady with a golf club over and over again, digital bloodspatter replacing itself as fast as it faded from the screen. I knew that if I opened up I’d see the sick loops circling around his head; dude was in the zone.

Honestly? I was disappointed. I mean, what a waste – an ancient archbeing’s undying power usurped, a treasure trove of physical and mystic power free for the fucking around with, and all you can come up with is drink, drugs and whoring? I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of angry jealousy at this failure of imagination, knowing that if my buddies and I had dared to run a grift like this we’d have done so much better. Just thinking like that must’ve been the taint of the place getting to me, but... seriously. Even if we hedged fully half the money and mojo on spooky insurance and cosmic bribes we’d still manage a hundred years of wonder, maybe a millennium of might and majesty, before that inevitable, inexorable somebody showed up at our door to do exactly what I was about to do.

I hoped Shafiq had something more interesting set up downstairs in the vault. If a man might be judged by the caliber of his opponents, I was coming out of this operation looking pretty low-rent. Stepping over a pasty jerk with PRAIZE SATAN 666 branded on his distended belly, I clickety-clacked through an unbelievably tacky chicken-bone bead curtain and headed down down down into the dirty earth.

Saturday, April 03, 2010

Hardwood floors always feel cool if the sun hasn’t been hitting them all day, and I liked that. It’s probably why it was my third night sleeping a stumble from my desk. I doubt it had much to do with me being too drunk to do anything but fall out of my chair; making it to bed had become as daunting as climbing a mountain or running a marathon, in that state.

The floor was where I slept and it kept my face cooler than flipping my pillow 100 times a night. Although it wasn’t very soft at all and I hadn’t vacuumed it in a while, it did keep me cool those nights. And I guess nothing more than wood could really be as hard as you, so it was no change. Cold and wooden; yes, it was like I was in your arms all over again. Except at least now I was drunk and unconscious and didn’t care this time.

Showering always feels good, no matter what crimes you may or may not have committed the night before; or even before that. I loved shaving that day, and even tried to press the blades into my face just to see how much pressure it would take to bleed-out and into the sink. It didn’t work and I just ended up looking well groomed.

No breakfast today, I knew it would make me sick. I drove to Anon looking at those fingers gripping my wheel. I could never get my fingernails clean. The Kendall “ToughTac” and its “3% Moly” haunted my hands forever. Fuck that grease. And fuck the long series of checks I had to pass through just to do a job.I have lived in Bnei Brak since 2004. Five years, now. I have driven this road a thousand times since then. They know me. I know them.

“Papers? Who are you? Why are you going to Anon? Do you have a pass? You are Canadian Passport, why do you come to Anon?”.

“My name is Sid Heart. I am the regional sales, repair and rep. for Caterpillar International. We sell you IDF boys the D9; you know? The dozer you call “Teddy Bear”?

“Ok, Mr. Heart. Please show me your company document and access permission. And where do you live?”

“I live in Bnei Brak, corner of OrHaHayim and Rashi, you know?”

“No. Show me your car. Get out, keys on roof. Please open the boot and doors.”

“Ok, here is the number of Rebbi Kats, he is my contact at the IDF, 972-3-821-8911. Please call him for verification.”

I had seen, met and even drank with ‘Mamak’ Silverman before. ‘Mamak’ Silverman is a terrible poker player. He always stands his rifle up and rests his chin on the stalk, lightly kicking the barrel when he is bluffing. It’s a shit tell. But we have played together, many times; when the roads are down and the lines are long, it’s best to make friends. Yet, he always gives me shit when I see him on those desert roads into the territories; the settlements. The bull-dozed-invasions. I’d get arrested for a fucking camera much, much quicker than I would for an AK-47 at these checks; IDF hates foreign media. A lot.

I fucking hate this desert. And I don’t get it; people actually kill and die for this shit. If God gave you this land, well, I think God is either an asshole or God really hates you.

Of course, Silverman and the boys let me through.

“Yes, Mr. Kats, I understand. Sorry, sir.”

Silverman half bows and quickly closes the sat. phone. He gestures to the road ahead.

“O.k., Mr. Sid Heart, you are verified for access to Anon, please be careful…”

I turn up the volume on my radio while he speaks and before Silverman finishes I weave through the concrete barriers and posted gunners, peeling out and off. I head for Anon, again.

My car is a modified Audi 900 with a skid-plate covering the entire chassis belly, armoured panels and bullet-proof windows. Diesel is costly, but the IDF pays, so I can’t really bitch about that. That armoured car looked so feeble, though, when IDF had its doors open and the hood and trunk were up, like some prehistoric metal bird in its dying throes or looking for a mate; pathetic and floundering.

90 minutes late. Fuck.

Anon is a shit-hole. A bulldozed shit-hole, thanks to me; thanks to the D9.Beit Shamesh, Anon’s mayor, welcomes me like a lost brother. The only reason he wants my D9 expertise is to clear land that isn’t his.

“Shalom. Shalom, Mr. Heart. I trust that your drive was safe? Did you encounter any problems?”

Israelis tend to refer to intifada or rocket-attacks or suicide-bombings as “problems” in the same glib manner the IRA are referred to as “the troubles”, in Belfast.Problems. Yeah, fuck you, Shamesh. IDF gives me more grief, and I sell you shit, than I have ever gotten from any Arabs in 5 years.

“Nope, it was a fine drive through God’s country Mr. Shamesh. And Peace to your town, Selah.”

In Anon I make the tired pitches;

“The Caterpillar D9 Bulldozer is Caterpillar's most well known piece of equipment. It weighs 54 tons, stock, and is powered by a 474 HP Cat diesel engine. Not only is it capable of razing an entire town with its 13 foot blade and optional ripper attachment, it also serves a very important position in the mining, forestry, construction, and waste management sectors”.

I started as a small engine repairman after a life fixing tractor engines and combine hydraulics for Ontario farms. I left the farms and worked in Toronto on city snowplows and graters. Finning hired me for Cat-troubles in Toronto. The, “Willing to Relocate?” box has always been checked on every application I sent. I never really meant it but I still checked it.I was, and also am, still, willing to relocate.

I am the only person in Anon without an Uzi, without an automatic machine-gun shoulder-slung. I decided long ago that carrying a gun was making a choice in this war of attrition, and I don’t care enough to choose. I just work; and drink and smoke. Those are the sides I choose. Those are the only sides I’ll ever choose and work for. At least then the war and casualties are both mine, alone.

After the sales meeting, town meeting, I dined with Shamesh at his fortress.Orthodox dinners are the worst. The food is fine but man, every fucking table probably looks the same at the same moment over Israel. The head of the house, the man, talks and talks and even starts yelling; challah in hand, soup dripping down his beard. The poor women, wife and daughter, just sit there, head down and serving food.Fucking awful; I like hearing other, less bearded voices.

I like silence. And I am fucking sick of talking business between bites and slurps. I just don’t care, really. I sell to these people but to me it’s just a pay-cheque; to them it’s life, death. But I don’t care at all. A part is a part and grease is just that. I hate this place. I hate being forced to choose a side on something I don’t give a fuck about.

I wanted to tell Shamesh that Fatah had ordered three stock D-9s. Not just to ramp prices, but to shut him up. Just to have some silence.

On the drive back I think I smoked about 20 cigarettes, one right after the other. I threw the glowing stubs out the window and watched in my rear-view as they hit the ground and exploded in sparks.